


the radio plays just the perfect song

by TLvop



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Clint Barton has a team and they are dorks, Darcy Lewis works for SHIELD and is the best, Darcy-centric, Friendship, Gen, Minor Character Death, Women Being Awesome, darcy/music a love story, horrible filing systems are REALLY frustrating okay?, in this fic Coulson lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-26
Updated: 2012-08-26
Packaged: 2017-11-12 23:24:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/496823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TLvop/pseuds/TLvop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Basically, I've been stymied in finding my iPod and now it's my personal quest, and I don't know if I can track down the owner without using the work databases but I'm not really sure that's allowed."</p><p>Coulson stares at her for a long moment, and Darcy hasn't often felt daunted but currently she's like a six on a scale from one to Sir Robin (and his minstrels). "Stymied?"</p><p>"It's a more epic way to say not finding it's offended me, and now it's super-personal."</p><p>--</p><p>A fic about Darcy and her first year with SHIELD. (And tangentially about how Clint should be more cautious when leaving things around the office.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the radio plays just the perfect song

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inkvoices](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkvoices/gifts).



> Based on [this prompt](http://be-compromised.livejournal.com/60569.html?thread=1512089#t1512089) on be_compromised! Yes, a prompt from a Clint/Natasha prompathon turned into a Darcy fic. It makes sense somewhere, I promise.
> 
> Many, many thanks to my beta genarti for being so kind to edit this into sense and giggle a lot with me! She is the ruiner of run-ons/the butcher of stray britishisms. I have cheerfully stolen Natasha's viewpoint on assumptions from her writing of another hyper-paranoid infiltrator/child soldier type. ♥. Many thanks and ♥ to ashen_key for cheerleading & sharing a brain & being my cheat-sheet for Natasha dialogue/characterization!
> 
> Title comes from "When I Am King," by Great Big Sea.

_Day 1_

"Ohhh," Darcy says, excited, on her first day at the New Mexico unit. To contextualize this statement, we must step back: Darcy doesn't really have anything to be doing yet; won't have anything to be doing until her new boss (the G-man, Agent Phillip J. Coulson himself) comes back from some emergency meeting in New York City (probably having to do with the monsters who duked it out. Or the robots. She's pretty sure Tony Stark's drunk hallucinations have officially crossed into reality). So she's fallen back, like all good ex-interns (that is, all ex-interns who've survived to being current-other-things), on making sure anyone she might need favors from later is properly supplied with coffee from the staff room. Delivering coffee means she ends up at the mail room, and at the mail room there's a small little package neatly inscribed

_Name: Darcy Lewis  
Employee #: 3c1683  
Location: R.1H5_

This prompts the initial excited exclamation. After Darcy's left the mail room, package and two business cards richer (she hastily scrawls details of the two workers onto the back of their cards once she's out of their line-of-sight so she can remember who they are), she sets her nose against the mail sticker. "He really does keep his promises," she informs the package, before glancing up quickly to make sure she's been unmonitored (except by the, like, five bajillion cameras. The security guys have to have some way to stay entertained—which reminds her. They'll need coffee, too). She walks very briskly, all business got-somewhere-to-go that she's perfected from long exposure to signature collectors.

She sits at her new, almost-undecorated desk (it has: 1 laptop, 1 pair of headphones, and 2 wrapped hard candies on it), and suddenly realizes she doesn't have her knife because taking a knife into a secure government facility is levels of _Lewis Don't Be An Idiot_ that she won't cross even on her most knife-needing of days. She ends up digging out her driver's license and shoving it into the tape until it finally tears, then using it as a really pathetic saw.

When the package is unsealed, she opens it very very carefully and removes her iPod and its tracking receipt. She leaves the receipt on the desk, but holds her iPod to her nose for a long moment, breathing in its plastic-y glass-y music-y aroma, before starting a spot inspection. 

"Oh, what the fuck," Darcy says loudly, before wincing and looking through the open door. No one appears to be in the hall, so she rubs at the scratch on the back with her finger, and succeeds in doing absolutely zero good. There're some smaller nicks on the sides, like whoever was packaging Ackbar was _severely drunk_ and also totally disrespectful of his rank as admiral. _Its rank as admiral, Lewis. Naming an iPod is one thing; gendering it is totally weirder._

She closes her eyes, hoping that it turns on and hasn't been killed by whatever bizarre science-testing they were doing; Ackbar lights up immediately, screen showing a title Darcy's never seen. She narrows her eyes, and swiftly switches her headphones from laptop to iPod, holding one earbud up to her ear before pressing play.

"Who in the world," she asks herself, after a few moments of trying to decipher what's going on (she manages it, once she realizes what language the somewhat-jumbled singing is in) "listens to _French disco_?"

_Day -4 (There is no 0th day. Don't worry; Clint checked.)_

Clint wakes up in his bed way too far to the left, and rolls back over to Nat's – the other side of his bed. He swings his feet over the side, and stretches. It takes him a moment to remember that she left for Sweden five hours ago. It's seven am, and he leaves from work for his flight out to New Mexico at three, so he shuffles into the bathroom to wake himself up and get changed.

It's on his way back to make the bed and grab his pre-packed duffel (stuffing in his bag of toothbrush etc.), that his foot hits something that goes sliding. He dips underneath the bed and feels around before pulling out Nat's iPod. "Shit," he says, staring at it for a long moment before shoving it into his pocket. Nat's flight is somewhere over the arctic by now, so he's just going to have to ship it to the Chicago office to meet her when she gets home in two weeks. 

The San Diego office is a mess; everyone's scurrying back and forth, and Clint has to wade through a bevy of junior agents to snag a box and sticker, carrying them safely over his head until he can get back to his office where everything important's been packed up (most of it shipped out already, as the New Mexico mission looks to be pretty lengthy) leaving everyone to entertain themselves.

"Pretty sure we're not supposed to mail our own stuff to New Mexico," Schmidt says, chewing on a pen from where she's leaning against Burke's sub-divider. Burke himself is playing finger football with Huerte, Beamon appears to be sleeping, and Henry is reading some... devotional-thing. Clint thinks it's a new one. "Pretty sure that's considered cheating – oh, give it up, that was totally a foul."

Clint rolls his eyes, and snags a pen from his drawer. " _Someone_ , not naming names," Huerte cleared his throat in a manner that sounded suspiciously like _Romanoff_ , "accidentally left an iPod in my possession. I'm merely doing my duty as a good citizen."

"The junior agents are very stressed," Henry starts, looking up, "with the equipment that came up for processing, you might want—"

He's interrupted by a loud buzzer, and Beamon jerks awake, scrambling to turn it off. "Ok. Team meeting, staff room, coffee. Coffee first, c'mon."

She walks into the hall; the rest of the team exchange glances, and follow along after.

Clint leaves behind: one iPod, one box, and one postage sticker with his sender ID and a scrawled _Agent Roma_

When he comes back, all three are gone, and he assumes he got her full name down; assumes everything's been taken off and shipped and taken care of.

You know what people say about assumptions.

(Nat says, _they get you killed._ )

_Day 2_

"Sir?" Darcy tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, now that she's written down the list of things Coulson wants her to do. (Coulson's coffee is Janice's turf. Darcy's glad; buttering up colleagues is basic survival training, buttering up your boss just makes your fingers grease-y and you feel gross and _Lewis, metaphor control._ ) 

"Yes, Ms. Lewis?" Agent Coulson looks up from his monitor with a mild smile. 

"Thank you for sending me my iPod," Darcy says, carefully. "Unfortunately, it turns out it's actually someone else's iPod, but they don't have their name on it. The mail room said I'd need your agent ID to ask the storage people who sent it about the mix-up."

"They have been very busy," Coulson agrees. He jots down a series of letters and numbers, and tears it off, handing it to Darcy.

"Thank you, sir," Darcy says, taking it and holding it carefully in her hand. "I'll do that right after work."

"You know, Ms. Lewis," Coulson says, back at his computer. "You may as well just start calling me Coulson. The rest of this place is much more likely to wear off on you than you on it."

"Oh," Darcy says, cheerfully, "don't worry about that, sir. By tomorrow I'll be on top of that, it's just right now you're doing me a favor, so it's polite. Thanks."

Darcy steps out of his office, does a victory fistpump, and goes to start on her list of duties.

After work, Darcy kicks off her shoes in her tiny bedroom (still larger than her dorm, thank goodness, otherwise she would've revolted. Though she's still sharing a bathroom, which she's pretty sure is against Geneva conventions.) and calls the number the mail room gave her. "Yes, hi, it's going to be number 7s9620. Uh, no, sorry, I realize this isn't Agent Coulson, this is his assistant Darcy Lewis. Oh, um, yeah – it's 3c1683." She waits for a long moment, untensing when the storage dude tells her he's found her file. "Okay, yeah, so Agent Coulson requested you ship out a silver iPod touch, 2nd generation a couple days ago? I was just calling to let you know I've got the wrong one. Is there another one on your files?"

The guy goes away, and flops back against her chair, staring up at the ceiling. Finally she starts to hum hold music to herself.

"—What, no, I'm here, sorry. Oh. Hm. I know you guys have been really busy," she says, unconsciously curling her hair around her finger. "And thank you so much for looking, but if you have time later could you maybe look again, for _me_?" She asks, half-biting her lip, before her face falls. "Oh! Congratulations, dude, that's awesome. Yeah, thanks. Haha, thank you, yeah, bye."

She sighs, and tosses her phone onto her bed. Where the _fuck_ is she supposed to find the owner of this iPhone, and what're the chances they actually did a switcheroo in the like two days hers was in holding?

_Day 3_

Clint wanders out through the complex, still damp from the gym showers, and swipes his ID card to get into the west cafeteria. The place is starting to fill up, and he only manages to get a half cup of coffee before the brewer runs out. He waves his hand in the vague direction of the kitchen in the hope of grabbing their attention, snags an orange from the fruit bowl, and heads to join Henry and Beamon where they're hunched over what might be the most glorious pile of bacon Clint's laid eyes on in at least a year. He's not sure how cooks decide Henry needs a lot of food, but he wishes he had the knack of it.

He stops, when someone waving their hand catches his attention, though he's not sure it's for him.

"You, Agent Shoulders," she calls, taking an earbud out of her ear, and he ID's her as that science assistant Coulson snagged. Apparently she's got a mean eye for detail, or something, but Clint thinks it's because her junior thesis was on the ... influence of Captain America on the United States' international conduct in the post-war years, or some bullshit like that. 

"Yeah, Lewis, right? You lookin' for something?"

"Do you know anyone who listens to groups of ladies sing ensemble medieval or like, pseudo-medieval songs? Because it's kind of important. Just to me, I mean, but like by really a lot."

Clint thinks about this for a long moment, and shakes his head. Lewis visibly droops, and he can't help but breathe a laugh. "You want me to ask around?"

She hesitates. "Well, whoever it is is probably from the San Diego office, so, you know. If you get the chance!"

"Will do," he says, before heading off. He turns around. "And it's Barton, not Shoulders."

From behind him comes a "Noted!" and he laughs again. Everything about Lewis screams _junior agent_ to him, even if she's technically a civilian – so he supposes what she actually is is just young.

_Day 3, later:_

"Agent Coulson," Darcy says, when it's kind of technically five o'clock even though she knows he won't acknowledge it for at least another forty minutes. "Do you mind if I ask your advice on something?"

"Quick advice?" Coulson asks, not looking up.

Darcy nods, and is about to clarify in case he can't see her when he glances up and raises his eyebrows, in a sort of _go on_. "Yes, well, basically I've been stymied in finding my iPod and now it's my personal quest, and I don't know if I can track down the owner without using the work databases but I'm not really sure that's allowed."

Coulson stares at her for a long moment, and Darcy hasn't often felt daunted but currently she's like a six on a scale from one to Sir Robin (and his minstrels). "Stymied?"

"It's a more epic way to say not finding it's offended me, and now it's super-personal."

"Why don't you use them to do some searching around, after work," Coulson says. "It's all paperwork for me at night until late, and it'll get you acquainted with the personnel systems."

"You're the best," Darcy says, but Coulson's staring at his monitor again.

She could swear, though, that before she turns around, his mouth twitches.

_Day 4_

Clint wakes up to a series of text messages:

_3:02am: barton is my ipod lost in your apartment?  
3:03 am: and hey you, hope you're having fun and not scaring the children too much  
3:13 am: I may not come back, but don't tell Coulson, he'll come and stare at me with disappointment. (Also, seriously, is my ipod at your place?)_

The last one makes him laugh, because he's pretty sure Nat hasn't realized her grammar gets better when she really wants something. He texts back a _me scare the children? surely your thinking of someone else. Ive got u covered. hows the daylight forever thing?_

A couple minutes later, he realizes he never got an e-mail confirmation from Chicago that they received the package, but the Chicago mail room wouldn't answer him about deliveries without dispensation from Nat, and they probably just mailed it to California – which is an hour behind New Mexico, and the mail room doesn't open properly 'til 8.

He and Nat text back and forth a couple times before he has to meet Carruthers in the gym.

Later, Clint says "6s1739," into the phone in his downtime between boxing Carruthers and Dr. Selvig getting flown in. He waits for his file to get pulled up. "Hey, did Chicago send you guys a confirmation slip for me? It'd be a box sent last week Tuesday. Naw, they didn't e-mail one. Thanks." He taps out a rhythm against the meeting table. "No record it was sent? Are you sure?" The room's empty, but Burke pokes his head in and Clint waves him in, right when the clerk returns. "Huh. Okay, thanks for the double-check."

He hangs up, and stares at his phone.

"That's a dangerous expression," Burke says. "Your goldfish kick the bucket?"

"That sounds like a tricky thing for a goldfish to do. I mean, if you take it literally," Schmidt says, coffee in hand. She stops just inside the doorway, and frowns, and Clint laughs tiredly.

"No, apparently Romanoff's iPod," Burke snaps his fingers in triumph and Schmidt rolls her eyes, "I mean _the iPod of someone who must not be named_ , didn't make it out of the office."

"Are you dating Voldemort now? Because I'm pretty sure I can't allow that, as your friend and partner."

"Snipers don't let snipers date Dark Lords?" Henry asks, mild and amused, before continuing down the hall.

Schmidt laughs, then stares after him with an odd expression on her face. She backs up a few steps, looks up at the number over the door. "I _knew_ this was the wrong room. Didn't I know this was the wrong room?"

"You maybe suspected it was the wrong room," Clint says, "but you were mistaken, because it was my room for sitting in, not the meeting room. You're a sheep."

"I was just sitting, too," Burke says quickly. "Don't know what your problem is, Schmidt."

"Baa," she mutters, and they follow her.

_Day 4, later_

"What do you know about the iPod owner?" Coulson asks, legs stretched out in front of him, having commandeered one of the roll-y chairs intended for people who show up to meet him early (as, Darcy is already aware, Coulson is never ever late). 

He'd brought Darcy one of the leftover donuts from this morning when he came back from 'stretching his legs' (i.e., acquiring coffee), and she's shifting between eating it and dusting off her fingers before she taps at the keys. Because unlike _some people_ , Darcy appreciates the inherent worth of electronics.

"Well, I've narrowed it down to a woman probably 25-35 who was maybe a liberal arts major? But that's not a super trackable variable even in this system. She's either French or Russian or speaks both of those or maybe she just has a really freaking weird taste in music. And she has a real job, now, since she'd go dropping some poor iPod around, so I figure she's probably an analyst, but seriously given all the variables and potential error that's still a really big pool."

"How'd you get age and gender? And potential major?" Coulson asks, and Darcy takes a moment to admire his skill at dismantling a jelly donut without stopping looking professional.

"She listens to Vienna Teng and Tori Amos, etc., etc., for the first two," Darcy says, "and no one but liberal arts majors listen to French techno _and_ Russian, like, screaming-metal bands _and_ the Mediaeval Baebes, which is basically what it sounds like." Darcy pauses for a moment. "She might be dating or married or just have friends in her car a lot. Like, I wouldn't really from everything else put her as someone who'd listen to Bruce Springsteen in her free time, but there you have it."

Coulson ponders this. He wipes his fingers clean. "May I look through the iPod for a moment?"

Darcy pauses the song she's on, disconnects her headphones, and hands it over. Coulson deftly goes back to the album list, and scrolls through, a thoughtful look on his face. After another minute of silence (though it feels like the Endless Minute), Darcy says, "What'd'you think?"

"Remarkably accurate," he says, blandly. "I know who this playlist belongs to. Good job, Lewis." He hands it to her with a nod as he stands, then he picks up his coffee and walks back to his office.

"But, uh—" she says after he passes her, "who is she, Coulson?"

"Don't worry," he pauses. "If you don't find her before two days are out I'll let you know." Lightly: "For the safety of a friend."

She eyes him for a long moment, nods, and turns back to her computer. She marks the age range, gender, and income as certainties. Then she adds in, _senior level (?)_ and _could be agent (?)_ before saving her results and calling it a night.

_Day 5_

Clint wakes up out of a dead sleep, and shoves himself off his bed to open his laptop. He types in _Midevil singers women modern_ and scans down until he clicks Mediaeval Baebes and reads the description. Okay, okay.

Lewis's got Nat's iPod. Okay.

Coulson's never going to let him live this down.

But it's 2am, and he knows where Nat's iPod is, so it's totally okay. He climbs back into his bed to sleep for a few more hours.

_Day 5, later_

Darcy eyes Agent Shoulders when he comes in through the door. She's pretty sure he knows Coulson's out doing his rounds as well as she does, because Coulson's _always_ out doing his rounds for 1:30-3:45, and because she thinks maybe the fact that he's old like her boss plays into it. (Though still with super hot arms; she can look, even if she fears the ancient cooties as they're a strain she's _totally_ never been vaccinated against, like, would that be square square point point or _Wait, talk to the people who come into your office, Lewis._ )

"Welcome to my parlor," she says, rolling back a bit in her fantastic roll-y chair, crossing her hands in front of her, elbows resting on the armrests.

"Pretty sure you're not a spider," Barton says, folding himself into a seat.

"That's where you're wrong. The tiny ones are the most dangerous," she says, snapping her fingers at him. "Or – that could very well be scorpions. Whatever. Something come up on the Mediaeval Baebes?"

"Yeah," he says, and does this thing where he doesn't quite laugh. It's pretty noncommittal; Darcy disapproves on principle. "An agent left her iPod with me before we came out here; I think it got shifted to the San Diego stores."

"Is she French or Russian? Because seriously, that's been bugging me."

"Russian," Barton says, startled, before his eyes narrow. "Wait, how did y—oh. Never mind."

"Never mind what?" Darcy asks, curious.

"Never mind, I almost gave away shit that'd you'd get in trouble with your boss for knowing."

"You play harsh." 

"I learned from the best. Well. Sometimes Coulson's the second-best. Depends if the Director's in earshot."

She nods, seriously, then freezes. "Wait, hold up. Are you saying you didn't pick anything up from lost and found?"

"I did not. Though honestly, it's more of a lost and-take-what-you-want. It teaches junior agents to keep track of their things."

Darcy moans and covers her face with her hands. "Who the fuck," she asks her hands, flatly, "has my iPod."

(Later, after she gives Barton his friend ("friend"? Hard to tell.)'s iPod and he's gone away, she exclaims "Rattlesnakes!"

Coulson makes an inquiring noise from his office and she reassures him.

She's definitely a rattlesnake. She should get a fake one to guard her desk.)

_Day 13_

"It's gone. My iPod's just, like, magic, poof!" Coulson observes her silently. She bites her lip. "Do you think the alien robot ate it?"

_Day 57_

"Hi, sorry, grab a seat," Darcy says, minimizing her windows as she smiles up at the woman who just walked in (seriously, you log onto Facebook for more than thirty seconds and suddenly some government agent is coming to wait next to your desk). She checks her schedule; the woman is here about the Justin Hammer PR debacle, so Darcy'd figure she was an analyst or legal, but she holds herself like a field agent.

A field agent with sparkly pink spider earrings. What. 

_What._

Darcy kicks herself back into assistant mode. "Would you like anything?" she asks, "Because the coffee machine's busted, but we have some donuts and soda. Diet and regular coke, some orange Fanta."

The woman's mouth curves very faintly in amusement. "Is the water cooler still working?"

"Can do," Darcy says, and shoves off to get a glass of water. (She tucks a Fanta for herself under her elbow – she's being efficient is all.) He comes out around the time she's giving the agent her water.

"Hello, Romanoff," Coulson says.

Suddenly everything falls into place, and Darcy sits down with a thud as they disappear into the office.

The super classy lady is _Agent Romanoff_. Agent Romanoff, of junior agent infamy, who can kill you with a look but would much rather do it with kidney knives. Who makes knives _specifically_ for kidneys? They think pretty highly of Barton, too, even though he's ridiculous. From listening to junior agents talk about Romanoff and Barton (which they can do for a really long time), Darcy's come to a conclusion. Either, a: all the dorky agents have really good PR machines OR b: French disco is the secret to being a badass.

(Pink spider earrings? _Seriously?_ Darcy thinks maybe she's a troll.)

_Day 301_

"Hey, Darcy," Tom says, and Darcy grins up at him before glancing sideways towards Coulson's office and sitting up more professionally. "You're fine, he's on some sort of conference call thing."

"Okay, sweet. Whatcha got?"

"There've been sightings," he intones, then tosses a card down to her with a name on it. "One of the guys who just transferred worked stores during That Week. He told me he was pretty sure an iPod got sorted in with the cords and shit from your scientist's thing, because no one knew the filing system. That's a clerk who still works there."

"Oh my gosh," Darcy says; because Uhura (she's not a Trekkie, but _damn_ is that woman badass) is sitting at her side but she misses Ackbar so much. _So much_. "I owe you like fifty million coffees."

"I don't know," Tom says, and his looking-cool wavers for a moment before holding. "I'd be fine with just one."

_Day 306_

Darcy's been busy with helping Agent Sitwell cover Coulson's job while he's in New York staring at sleeping super soldiers, but she finally finds time to call the San Diego office when Coulson gets back and lets her off early after seeing how many hours of overtime she's clocked this week. She thinks she might love her boss. She at least is definitely bringing him banana nut muffins Monday.

"What?" she asks, horrified. "You sent it all to the New York office? No, I mean, yes, I see why – closed until Tuesday? Oh, the holiday. We don't really get that off, so I forgot—yes, sure. Thank you."

She hangs up, and moans, burying her face in her pillow. After a moment, she props herself up.

She's going to go get beer and bake muffins. No one can say she doesn’t have fantastic coping skills.

_Day 310_

"You don't have record of it being checked out? Well, uh—"

_Fuck you and the horrible filing system you rode in on._

"—thanks."

_Day 417_

Darcy realizes she's being a coward, sitting on the third-floor stairwell with her knees drawn up to her chin, fingernails getting stuck on her stockings as she scrapes lightly along them trying to calm down, but she's _not a secret agent adult_. Everyone's sad, downstairs at the memorial, but they're keeping it together in a way she almost can't just hearing the music play.

It's a relief to know that Coulson's name isn't going to make it onto any lists, that he's stable at the hospital, but it didn't help the oppressive air of hearing the names of her seventy-three dead coworkers being called out. At _Palmer, Janelle_ , she'd started to shake -- they'd had coffee and crepes the week before and talked about Doctor Who and narratives of the heroic (i.e., white) outsider. At _Sullivan, Tom_ she had to bail.

The lower door opens, and the music gets louder, and Darcy forces herself to extend her legs so she's not hunched up like a five year old trying to escape a bad dream. The guy who comes up is in a dress uniform she doesn't recognize for a moment, before she realizes he's Captain Steve Rogers America. She swallows, and smiles weakly at him, as he stops a flight down and looks at her thoughtfully.

"They've just finished, miss," he says, just loud enough to carry. "There're going to be a lot of people coming through here in a couple minutes."

She nods, shakily, and rubs her palms over her knees, moving to stand up. It's hard going, because her legs've fallen asleep, but there's a railing and she holds onto it as she wobbles, and Rogers (who's super-quick, for a superhero with no rockets attached) is at her arm in case she needs support.

"You're Coulson's assistant, aren't you?" he asks, watching her. It's kind of hard to make eye contact; he's too concerned.

"Yeah."

He's quiet, and she tries to summon up the energy to thank him for warning her, when he says "Would you like to come up to the roof with me? I was going to try to escape the buzz."

She looks at him for a moment, and says, startled, the first thing that comes to mind: "Barton's probably called dibs."

"Nah," Rogers says, with an easy smile, and she feels herself smile back a bit. "He left with Agent Romanoff."

Darcy considers this, and nods. "That sounds… great."

The breeze on the roof is cold, pretty standard for a desert night, but Rogers makes a _brr_ noise that makes her grin a bit. "Welcome to New Mexico," she says, and if her voice is groggy she manages to make her tone pretty easy. "Land of confusing the crap out of East-Coasters."

"You could say that again," he says, a little wondering. "I thought for sure I was going to bake out here. Are you okay?"

"Yeah," she says, after a moment, and she is. She's not wearing exactly the warmest clothes, but she's got on stockings and a business jacket. After Rogers helps her sit (and, embarrassingly, she probably needs the help), she tucks her hands into her sleeves. He sits down next to her, and he's kind of like a radiator, which helps.

After they're quiet for awhile, staring at the stars, Darcy says, sudden: "I mean, I'm kind of the newbie, right? I've only been there a year, I don't – but so many of them – they're just _gone_."

He turns to look at her, grave. "Yeah," he says, and she feels like a… jackass, or a poser, for being taken so seriously.

"Sorry," she mutters, miserable. "I'm just…"

"It's okay," Rogers says, and at her look he laughs a bit, looking back out over the edge of the roof and at the lights and stars. "Honest, you're allowed to be upset when things happen."

"I guess," she agrees, after a moment, and bites her lip. She wants to apologize again, because – losing people is kind of Rogers' game, but she doesn't think he'd appreciate it. She looks up at the sky.

"What do you do when you're sad?" he asks, after a moment.

"Listen to music," she says, quietly. "Happy stuff, like, I don't know. Some pop, or – some stuff by Great Big Sea. But, I don't have pockets, so."

He nods, and opens a pocket, drawing out an iPod. "I actually have them, I think," he says, scrolling through his list. He plugs in his earbuds, and hands the iPod to her; she sticks one of the buds in her ear, watching the scrolling text on the screen before she sees the _A_ scratched on the lower left part of the case, from before she chickened out of actually completely ruining his surface. Between Rogers looking at her with some concern, and Ackbar playing  When I Am King at her soothingly in her hands, Darcy starts to cry. 

Janelle is dead. Tom is dead. Priya is dead. Daniel and Coulson and Beamon and Lisa are all in the hospital, and she—her home of a year collapsed into the Earth, stolen by an alien who wanted to destroy _everything_ good about people.

She's a mess, a sobbing, hiccupping mess. Rogers gives her his handkerchief, which just makes it worse, but she leans into him when he puts an awkward hand on her shoulder.

_Later_

She lets Steve ( _Steve_ , now, because he told her to, even if in her head he's always going to be some variety of _Captain Rogers_ or _Steve America_ ) keep Ackbar, after she compares its music with what she's downloaded to Uhura. Steve's downloaded a whole bunch of swing music, which he said Coulson tipped him off to, and Darcy's a little suspicious about how long Coulson knew Steve had her iPod. 

( _Just throw me under the bus, boss,_ she thinks, amused.)

"Oh," she says, when Steve's hovering over one of her tracks on Uhura, a look of pure confusion on his face at the note on it. They're sitting at a Starbucks in Chicago, the current base of operations until the New York office and Stark Tower get fixed up. (Apparently, Darcy's going to get to be Coulson's assistant superhero-sitter. Woohoo?) "I got that from the person whose iPod I ended up with."

"Who listens to French disco?" he asks, entertained and he looks at her from under his eyebrows, chin still tucked in so he can read the iPod. Darcy's kind of proud that he knows: a) what disco is, and b) why this is really freaking weird.

Darcy takes a long sip of frappuccino for dramatic effect. "Agent Romanoff. And me."


End file.
